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DISCLAIMER
Views expressed in this report do not necessarily represent the views of the Inclusive Society Institute or its Board or Council members.
February 2025
Author: Dr Klaus Kotzé
Editor: Daryl Swanepoel
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Orientation
3 Panellists’ contributions
3.1 Re-framing narratives: Exploring the transformative potential of short film-making
3.2 Afrofuturism in Film: Towards Cultivating Transformative Leadership for Equity and Diversity in Response to Crises
3.3 Decolonising Education in South Africa: Reclaiming the Dustbin of African History
3.4 Reimagining Education in South Africa: Decolonizing the Curriculum for Equity and inclusion
3.5 Decolonised education: Perspectives from Kenya
3.6 Crossing the impasse in the discourse on decolonised education
3.7 A view from civil society: An introduction to Habitat International Coalition
4 Points of convergence
4.1 Comprehensive and critical
4.2 Decentring and emancipatory
4.3 An ubuntu education
5 Significance of the dialogue
6 Conclusion
Cover photo: istock.com – Stock photo ID: 534575779
1 Introduction
On 20 November, the Inclusive Society Institute hosted a dialogue on the substance and implementation of a decolonised education in South Africa. The dialogue, the first in a planned series that recognises that while South Africa has made significant progress since the achievement of non-racial democracy, much work remains in conceptualising and substantiating the aspirations that are outlined in the national Constitution. Dialogue, which was central to achieving a political breakthrough and in establishing the legitimate South African state, is a powerful process whereby the appropriate means and ways of democratic legitimacy are expressed. Dialogue offers a critical and collaborative approach to uncovering the interests of different sectors of society. Allowing for the cross-pollination of ideas and the fostering of shared understanding. It is this shared understanding that promises to imbue South Africans with the common will required to express people’s power.
Due to its relevance, potential and power, the Inclusive Society Institute chose dialogue as the preferred way to engage with the important, yet complicated issues facing the South African nation in its democratic and developmental processes. The legacies of colonialism and Apartheid have left confounding sets of challenges and opportunities. In the democratic era the government and people have the means to bring about change, the question now regards: what kind of change? The indirect and overarching power of universal (read western) ideological power remains a constraint in the postcolonial period. Due to these stayed power systems, South Africans have yet to pave its own path. Its own identity and ways of looking at the world and shaping it.
The topic of decolonised education was chosen for the first dialogue due to the foundational and determinative effect that education and pedagogy has on South African society. Decoloniality is a space for discussion. It asks for introspection and for the critical assessment of concepts. If South Africa is to pursue and achieve the transformative social justice envisioned in the Constitution, it requires an education system fit for purpose. It's not just the curriculum and how a subject is taught, but whether the people, the economy and the security, even the national interest, is being served. Such a system would neither perpetuate former, colonial mores, nor would it bandwagon on contemporary tropes. It would be one that critically reflects its own reality. One that gives rise to equipped, holistic individuals that together participate in fulfilling the transformative aspirations of the Constitution.
In pursuit of these goals, several experts and practitioners in the fields of education, pedagogy and civil society were invited to present their views as pertaining to the subject matter. The following questions were put to the panellists:
What kind of pedagogy and education is needed to pursue our Constitutional project?
What is the meaning and purpose of decolonisation? Does South Africa need to this?
What does decolonised pedagogy and education entail? And, how does it compare with the current form and content of our education?
The panellists included:
Dr Wendy Smidt, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES), Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Professor Zayd Waghid, Director, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES), Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Dr Oscar Koopman, Senior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Dr Karen Koopman, Senior Lecturer, University of the Western Cape
Dr Pryah Mahabeer, Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu Natal
Dr Andrew Wambua, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES)
Distinguished Professor Aslam Fataar, Sociology of Education, Stellenbosch University
Ms Yolande Hendler, Secretary General, Habitat International Coalition
2 Orientation
Thirty years after Apartheid, contestation remains about where South Africa is going and how it will get there. Pedagogy and education lie at the centre of convening and consolidating the South African national project. The approach of our pedagogy and the substance of our education must be designed to strategically pursue the national goals.
While the educational and pedagogical systems have changed since those under Apartheid, many believe these new models are insufficient and problematic. Their substance and approach are seen as alien to the needs and realities of South Africans; a perpetuation of former, imposed models. Recently, the concept of decolonisation has drawn interest from intellectuals and across the scholarship. Decoloniality takes the concepts of European modernity and its imposition of views, norms and mores as its starting point.
Whereas the end of political coloniality was drawn to a close with the adoption of a non-racial, transformative Constitution, the meaning and substance of post-colonial South Africa has not been consolidated. While the decolonial movement seeks to interrogate these questions through stimulated conversations, many questions remain about its meaning, approach and potential outcomes.
As an independent, public benefit organisation, the Inclusive Society Institute has identified the pronouncements and upheaval across university campuses on the topic of decolonisation. The Institute recognises that for South African institutions to function optimally, the knowledge and pedagogy approaches must both be fit for purpose and must speak to the broader South African reality. The Institute is thus not opposed to the need to decolonise education. Rather, as a public benefit organisation that seeks to support Constitutional democracy, the Institute is interested in what a decolonised education will look like. To the Institute, such an approach needs to be nuanced. The Institute convened this meeting so to attain such a broader, more nuanced perception.
3 Panellists’ contributions
3.1 Re-framing narratives: Exploring the transformative potential of short film-making
Dr Wendy Smidt, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES), Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Dr Smidt’s contribution focused on how need to rethink the ways in which education could be decolonised and what that would mean. Using the medium of film and the process of film-making, she spoke to the challenges and opportunities that decolonised education has to create a more equitable and inclusive education system.
She focused on film-making’s transformative potential. In Africa, storytelling has been a very popular way of communicating. This has been the case for generation upon generation. While the media may have changed, the essence have remained. Storytelling has profound impact. Not only on the consumer or audience, but also on the producer or narrator. In modern times, digital storytelling has become ubiquitous. Anyone with a smartphone can become a storyteller. Can create and can capture an audience.
In answering the question that asks what kind of pedagogy and education is needed to pursue the Constitutional project, she suggests that film literacy would be central to the development of critical self-awareness and personal growth.
Through storytelling, film-making can challenge dominant narratives and promote alternative perspectives. Not only by watching films. Creating one’s own films from one’s own histories and personal backgrounds would contribute greatly to the active process of decolonisation. Supplanting gaze, context, framing and content would have a significant role in shaping a more relevant narrative.
In doing so, in applying what is already manifest on the continent and in the country, the contemporary narrative would be inherently more local, as it is crafted by the locals and does not have to be mediated through colonial or external views. This is the value that widely accessible digital tools have. They empower the creators to truly tell their own story. In their own way. Imbuing it with their own perspectives and visions. By fostering critical thinking and empathy for literacy can help individuals develop more nuanced understanding of history and culture.
By doing to, Smidt said, the education system can aspire towards ‘full literacy’, which the speaker referred to as a boundary-crossing competence. That through interaction, individuals develop the potential to cross boundaries. Whether geographical, linguistic, cultural, and to enable the youth to exchange their ideas in terms of heritage. In terms of culture and in terms of their values and beliefs.
Furthermore, she emphasised that visual communication speak louder than only words. Visuals also speak to culture and heritage. And by disrupting habitual patterns of cognition and defamiliarization that external visual culture has, new ways and new citizenship can be inculcated. This is not an automatic process but one that needs to be developed. Both with students and with the teachers. By actioning the values and cultures embedded.
Looking at implementation of a decolonial system, Smidt suggested that, first, tolerance was needed. While dominant narratives should be challenged, it should not be done by summarily throwing them out. Instead, a critical process needs to be undertaken. Not one that is negative and judgemental. But one that asks about possibilities in a non-linear way. To spread ideas.
This can be done through greater multimodal media literacy. There are different ways of communicating apart from language. People understand images and symbols much better. Particularly in Africa, where the rich tradition of symbols amplifies marginalised voices. This approach is ideally suited in the modern, digital ecosystem. And where more and more people have access to such advanced devices. These platforms are often free-to-use, allowing for abundant creativity. They also allow for the promotion of social justice and activism by raising awareness of social issues and mobilising communities.
Lastly, the speaker suggested that the path towards a decolonial education is not through taking down statues. It is not through ignoring cultures and histories. But through critically engaging. Through promoting cultural identity and heritage. Prioritising a more inclusive and culturally relevant curriculum. A living curriculum. Not one that is set within a rigid form. It is important to be able to recognise mistakes and adapt. In doing so, being flexible, the curriculum itself will encourage a critical thinking. A problem-solving creativity. Encouraging students to engage with moral and ethical issues. Not only by becoming the creators of their own content through their historical and cultural and artistic lenses. But also, to make them aware that they need to be responsible citizens. They need to accept responsibility for their actions. And, with their audiences, to look at their inherent values and then plot a path about how to proceed critically and respectfully.
3.2 Afrofuturism in Film: Towards Cultivating Transformative Leadership for Equity and Diversity in Response to Crises
Professor Zayd Waghid, Director, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES), Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Professor Waghid’s contribution focused on what he termed Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is presented as a phenomenon, but also in terms of a pedagogical approach to be used in educational contexts as a means of cultivating transformative leadership towards addressing the national (and continental) challenges. This was specifically presented to be taken in the context of education in South Africa.
In familiarising the audience with the concepts, Waghid suggested that there are different interpretations of what decolonisation means. His is a critical approach that seeks to do away with imposed norms and tropes, which are outdated or do not serve the people. In essence, there are different understandings around how South Africans position themselves. The process of decolonising includes a need to think beyond a local context, to think more Globally. Where knowledge can be transferred between various contexts.
Afrofuturism is presented, in terms of Franz Fanon’s thinking, as a cleansing force from psychological violence. In other words, people, through this psychological violence, reconstruct themselves. By transcending the notion of a being in a neo-colonial mindset. Following the thinking of Kwame Nkrumah, to decolonise one needs to think beyond. Whether it is in economic, social or cultural aspects.
Afrofuturism can be seen in the film Black Panther. It blends the science-fiction fantasy story with historical significance and in relation to African philosophy. It blends these aspects towards challenging dominant narratives around coloniality. Afrofuturism thus functions as a tool of resistance. Where the idea is to give the creators of these cultural products the ownership in terms of the images and the cultures surrounding it. In so doing, narratives are challenged, democratised and re-envisioned. But it is also looking at how knowledge can be interpreted. It therefore functions as an aesthetic and a critical theoretical framework. Afrofuturism creates fissures in the present by re-imagining what Africa could look like in the absence of coloniality. It replaces the negative perceptions about how Africa is perceived.
Afrofuturism broadens the political, psychological and physical aspects of decoloniality by including the cultural and symbolic realms that aims to enrich discussions around leadership; Afrofuturism attempts to disrupt the neo-colonial mindset. To re-focus decolonial consciousness by challenging narratives and embracing their African identities and culture.
One way of doing so, suggests Waghid, is through the practice of defamiliarization. This he explained using the example of a pencil is when one looks that pencil and look beyond it being a writing tool. Thus, breaking the perception in terms of what one sees as an object. Looking at an object as if it was the first time, not knowing its usual usage or understanding. In other words, it is a way of breaking from the automatic perception and towards reinvention. By incorporating diaspora culture, one creates a new form of culture that could further influence and reshape the type of leadership that one seeks to develop. In other words, by affording the students the opportunity to engage and critique their own cultures. This process can itself create tensions. It is therefore important that students are conscientized into this approach. Cultural reinvention is thus an opportunity for students to come together and to create this new form of culture.
A further but related aspect is narrative reformulations. In other words, affording students the opportunity to create their own stories, as discussed by Dr Smidt in her presentation. This gives the students the opportunity, for instance, to critique the type of leadership that is conventionally found in contemporary society. Moving beyond qualities of race, gender, age, etc. Looking at how students could be seen as leaders by creating spaces for them to take more leadership and thus preparing them for society.
In conclusion, Afrofuturism focuses on the means and ways of building and cultivating communities that are equal and socially just. That can speak to issues, critically. By prompting students to engage with their surroundings, through concepts and narratives that they are familiar with. To be critical and self-reflexive. And to engage in conversations that embrace diverse traditions and knowledges.
3.3 Decolonising Education in South Africa: Reclaiming the Dustbin of African History
Dr Oscar Koopman, Senior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University; and Dr Karen Koopman, Senior Lecturer, University of the Western Cape
Doctors Koopman and Koopman delivered a combined presentation drawing from their co-edited book Decolonising the South African University: Towards Curriculum as Self-Authentication. Theirs, too, was a presentation where re-framing and a critical examination of education in South Africa was central. Much like a conversation, true education has an unknown outcome. The educational experience resists a single measure, allowing learning to unfold naturally through the shared space of teacher and learner. When framed as pedagogy, learning becomes something measurable. Evaluated by its capacity to fulfil particular social, political and economic goals. This dynamic suggests an enduring tension. Those who advocate for true education must continually defend it against the utilitarian drive of pedagogy. Historically, proponents of true education who sought to cultivate free thought that results in inner freedom, critical reflection, self-awareness, and personal transformation, who did not see education as a pathway for career readiness or economic gain, faced significant challenges.
Doctors Koopman’s goal for decolonised education is to revive the call for a true educational experience for every learner. To them, it is not enough to simply replace the external and more obvious oppressive institutions that the colonisers imposed here. For decades, South Africa sought to reform its education system by making structural and symbolic changes, such as renaming schools, renaming universities and departments, or revising curricula to reflect the more inclusive democratic ideals. However, despite these efforts, the underlying content, teaching methods and philosophical foundations too often remained rooted in colonial paradigms. Though well intentioned, these approaches did not address the root causes. Did not fundamentally transform the ideas, approaches and values embedded in the curriculum which continues to advance a Eurocentric knowledge system. It continues to prioritise western theories and perspectives, while marginalising African Indigenous knowledge systems, languages and ways of knowing. This limited South Africans’ ability to truly thrive as a means of self-authentication, as it left students disconnected from their cultural heritage and identities.
To truly decolonise its education, South Africa needs more than just a new sign on the door. It requires a rethinking of the educational goods themselves. This means developing curricula that draw on African epistemologies, prioritise African languages and histories, and cultivate a sense of belonging and self-worth. This must be done by revisiting and exploring the deeper regions of personal experience and culture.
Only by transforming the essence of what is taught, and how it is taught, can South African education move from superficial changes to substantive ones that empower students to see themselves authentically reflected in their education. To decolonise the curricula, South Africans must recover marginalised voices. Or as the presenters stressed: South Africans must recover what was thrown into the dustbin of history. One can not only critique the legacy of western education. One must bring forward transformative ideas that disrupt the deep-rooted western paradigms that still dominate classrooms.
The real work lies in creating a meaningful rupture in the current frameworks of knowledge. To effectively pursue decolonisation, educators must reimagine what alternative models to Eurocentric structures might look like. Models that affirm African perspectives, values, methodologies as foundational rather than peripheral. It is important that this reimagining moves beyond critique and engages in rigorous scholarship that validates and centres African epistemologies, preparing scholars to reshape the intellectual landscape of institutions. Therefore, to rupture and decentre colonial knowledge, Africans must return inward, to its own thinkers, practitioners and leaders.
This is the knowledge that has been inscribed in students, in South Africans, from their birth. The values and perceptions of their lived experience that will help liberate minds and bodies. When a child enters the world, they undergo a first birth in which they are nurtured, taught through the lens of cultural heritage. It is this heritage that needs to be recovered and upon which educational models should be centred. It is through this process that children develop adaptive solutions and are formed in the image of their social and cultural settings. This knowledge represents an invaluable resource for decolonisation. A pathway to authentic, holistic understanding that westernised curricula often do not address. It is in this phase that children are taught belonging, respect, coping strategies, herbal remedies etc. Too often these traditional ways are rejected for cheap and inferior, yet popular alternatives.
Colonial education introduced what could be seen as a second birth. An imposed identity that sought to overwrite indigenous ways of knowing. However, through decolonisation, it becomes the responsibility of teachers to facilitate a third birth. This is where learners reconnect with their African identities and affirm it with legitimacy. This process integrates the indigenous knowledge systems into ways of doing. By reclaiming and reinstating what is indigenous and traditional, the reclamation of ‘self’ takes place.
Lastly, the speakers introduced what they called Ubuntu consciousness. To disrupt the dominant Western paradigms and their reliance on abstract, predetermine knowledge, the Ubuntu-conscious teacher emphasises self-awareness. Drawing on a student’s connection with the world around them. Encouraging students to explore concepts and acknowledging the diverse perspectives of any cultural group. This approach does not only consider the insights some, but also of everyday, ordinary members of society. Capturing the essence of lived experience that shapes personal understanding within a cultural context.
This critical approach encourages and guides students to reflect on their humanity, which includes their significance and agency in their communities. In essence, the goal of Ubuntu-conscious pedagogy is to create space for students to access and reconnect with culturally grounded knowledge that may otherwise be dismissed in favour of Western dogma.
The cultivation of self-consciousness within Ubuntu pedagogy also aims to develop students as critical and independent thinkers by introducing them to multiple perspectives and ideologies. Rather than reinforcing established norms. Students are encouraged to question and engage with differing viewpoints through discussions that include divergent voices and perspectives. Students can now begin to see beyond their initial assumptions, developing insights into why they believe, and why they act the way they do.
When students see that their lived experiences and cultural practices are respected as valid sources of knowledge, it affirms their identities and promotes a deep connection with the learning process. This culturally integrated approach allows students to move beyond the imposition of colonial knowledge systems, and toward an authentic understanding of self and community; a decolonised understanding. Ubuntu-conscious pedagogy, therefore, serves not only to educate, but also to heal and empower by valuing the whole person, and the cultural wisdom they carry.
3.4 Reimagining Education in South Africa: Decolonizing the Curriculum for Equity and inclusion
Dr Pryah Mahabeer, Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu Natal
Doctor Mahabeer suggested that indigenous ways of knowing that remain neglected should become un-fixed, and fluid. Instead, conversations should become dynamic processes. She suggested that a decolonised education would see multiple ways of knowing being honoured. Where the story of one student’s grandma would hold weight alongside that of the stories in textbooks.
According to her, mother tongue education should not only be tolerated, but celebrated and promoted. To her, lived experiences enrich academic discourse, rather than simply being anecdotal. This, she said, is the promise of a decolonised curriculum. A radical reimagining of the South African society, and its education system. This radical reimagining took its root from student movements such as ‘Fees must Fall’ and ‘Rhodes must Fall’. They challenged conventional thought. Advancing a different approach to education, arguing that true educational transformation requires more than superficial changes. Demanding a fundamental reconstruction of how knowledge is created, authenticated, and transmitted. Herein, decolonisation is not merely about rejecting western knowledge. But rather creating a balance or an inclusive educational environment that recognises diverse lived experiences.
Mahabeer emphasized the goal of developing graduates who are both academically skilled and critically conscious. She focused on the theme of knowledge as power. In this regard, it matters to ask who decides what knowledge matters. She stressed that the idea of knowledge being objective or universal, too is a specific understanding of knowledge. And if objective or universal knowledge is a construct, it too can be reassessed.
She suggested that a diversity of knowledge, not simply a singular universal perception, can be an intellectual strength. What matters more is how one balances respecting and honouring local knowledge while still maintaining global academic standards. This balance, while tricky, should be pursued. Teaching is not a neutral process, but carries with it loaded perceptions, politics and power structures. In pursuing a more balanced approach, educators must be trained to unlearn deeply embedded colonial mindsets.
In concluding, Mahabeer stressed that decolonisation is not about rejection, but about creating more expansive, inclusive, and meaningful ways of learning and understanding our world. Where success isn’t just measured by grades, but by how deeply students understand themselves, and their place in the world. It is about nurturing graduates who are not only academically skilled but critically conscious. Students who understand the interconnections between global issues and local contexts. Who can think deeply, feel compassionately, and act transformatively. Curricula should not just teach about the world. It should teach students to question how to understand the world. Curricula should balance theoretical rigour with contextual relevance that sees students not only as empty vessels to be filled but as active creators of knowledge.
Decolonisation of education is, therefore, not a destination but a continuous journey. A commitment to creating transformative educational spaces that are more just, more inclusive and more human. Creating spaces where learning is truly liberating. Allowing for a liberated lived experience. This journey, she stressed, is not without its challenges. Institutional resistance runs deep, and many people are comfortable with existing systems. They are reluctant to disturb the status quo. To address this issue, educators should become co-learners. They should be expected to challenge their own assumptions, their own conventions, their own worldviews. To create spaces where students can critically engage with knowledge that is contextual and culturally relevant to the lived experiences of students.
3.5 Decolonised education: Perspectives from Kenya
Dr Andrew Wambua, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Institute for Teacher Education and Society (GITES)
Dr Wambua spoke about how teaching and learning methods give expression to real freedom on the continent. Through installing appropriate education systems, the policy objectives of the African Agenda 2063 must be pursued. This cannot remain a distant dream but must be put to practice through critical approaches. He suggested that too often Africans simply copy and paste approaches and solutions from afar. They do so due to the immense complexity and intersectionality of the continent’s concerns. Instead of installing equipped teachers that are well resourced, African education systems are poorly conceived, and teachers are not trained to adjust, to adapt, or employ a contextualised approach. Teachers are not developing the competencies which are needed. The competencies of learning, un-learning and re-learning. This, said Dr Wambua, could be perceived as a decolonising approach.
Collaboration is also an important decolonising approach. Working in a team, implementing different approaches, undertaken by different role players. Teachers must be able to undertake the kind of creative, critical approach expected of the students. If the teachers cannot be creative, nor will the students be.
Diversity is a further strength that is not sufficiently deployed in Africa. Wambua made mention of both Kenya’s and South Africa’s plurality of languages. This, he said, was an inner strength which is used to divide peoples. Multilingualism is not advanced, and English is too dominant. It shows that Africans are neither proud of who they are, nor can they deploy their strategic advantages. Indigenous ways are looked at by Africans not as strengths, but as liabilities. People on the continent have come to see themselves as primitive. They have absorbed negative descriptions, thus giving these descriptions power over themselves. Instead, Africans must be free in their thinking. They must be critical and develop their own approaches and understandings of their environment and the world at large. Culture is a combination of values and belief systems. Unless a balanced, nurturing culture is developed, a decolonised education is not achievable. It must start in the mind. Actions are dictated by values, beliefs and attitudes.
3.6 Crossing the impasse in the discourse on decolonised education
Distinguished Professor Aslam Fataar, Sociology of Education, Stellenbosch University
Professor Fataar’s contribution focused on two concerns. The first is what he referred to as a stagnation in the decolonial discourse. This, he said, has reached an impasse. There is too much argumentation about concepts and epistemologies, and too little action. He reminded the group that since they were curriculum and education scholars, they must attend to education materials from a practical perspective.
The second, he said, is that there is too much focus on the past. There needs to be change, from a past-centred focus, to a future-centred one. To developing a decolonial futures ethics perspective. In other words, the world of today is much more complex than the past focus on decoloniality suggests. This fixed view of the past does not allow for the approaches, the kinds of knowledge, that are required. Knowledge is much more complex. Artificial intelligence and planetary transition are clear suggestions hereof. The conversations about knowledge and how it circulates must be much more complicated and critical. These conversations, which today are too parochial, are critical to giving meaning to peoples’ lived realities.
Professor Fataar then asked: what are the conceptual principles by which decoloniality and decolonial futures can be brought into the curriculum of schools and universities? He suggested the conversation about decolonised education needs to be a practical one, guided by principles. This is the debate that is needed today. Thus far, it has been more about the rhetoric, the discourses, symbolism, the epistemological debates. While these are important, practicality is now needed.
Professor Fataar concluded by addressing the following question: what are the curricula knowledge claims of decolonised education? To him, the following stand out. First, it must be a very careful knowledge claim about how knowledge works, inclusively, across all knowledge systems that could ever have been imagined. Thus, including pre-modern, indigenous, modern, post-modern, and post-colonial. All of them. This is across all ecologies of knowledge, where no knowledge systems are excluded. The decoloniality claim is one that de-centres Eurocentric modern, western-centred knowledge. Not jettisoning it. Not throwing it away. But simply decentring it, as one amongst many. Making space for the re-centring of decolonial knowledge claims.
Looking at knowledge claims in the realms of science and maths. Looking at how one impacts concept-building in the learning of maths or science form a decolonial perspective. If one takes the social structures of Marx, Du Bois, Parsons, Weber, etc., these social structures were already established in the 12th and 13th centuries in the North African context. Called by different names, different concepts, they were absorbed by enlightenment’s structuralist philosophers, without acknowledgement. This is how one engages with the past. One must be careful about how one deals with these knowledge claims.
The second claim is that a decolonial education makes is an identity claim. A knowledge and identity claim. A question is then: how does one de-centre colonial identities, bringing in a sense of inclusiveness. How does one interrogate that identity claim in designing curricula. How does one work with an identity claim in the applied sciences, where people are thinking about the built environment, and about concepts such as artificial intelligence. What people are thinking about data, and so on. How does one bring identity claims into those conceptualisations? How does one design a curriculum that is transdisciplinary in the arts curriculum, where one includes decoloniality as an identity claim?
The final claim on decolonial education is the need for relevance and contextualisation. Fataar stressed that claims should be relevant and contextual. Finding ways of bringing indigenous knowledge systems and indigenous languages into the curricula is not a simple matter. These are the conversations that need to be had. Finding practical ways of application.
Professor Fataar concluded by making two final points. He argued for a social realist lens. Suggesting that there is something real about knowledge. That knowledge has boundaries. When one brings decolonial concepts into curricula, one must observe curriculum boundaries. At present decoloniality is too abstracted, too much of a catch all. It tries to do too much and therefore comes up short. It cannot just be applied willy-nilly. By imposing it everywhere it does damage to both the place where it is applied and to itself. Instead, one must observe boundaries and conceptual coherence. One must observe how things come together in their knowledge systems. Instead, one must have a keen understanding of the fields one is working in and then to understand the concepts one is working with. This will allow for the development of a decolonial education.
Lastly, when one looks at university curricula and their various disciplines, there are exceptionally important, theoretical, and conceptual questions that have to be asked about how one brings decoloniality into the various suites of disciplinary and trans-disciplinary offerings of the university. These are not easy questions. Education and curriculum scholars need to engage with these questions on an urgent, deep and continuous basis.
3.7 A view from civil society: An introduction to Habitat International Coalition
Ms Yolande Hendler, Secretary General, Habitat International Coalition
Habitat International Coalition (HIC) is a global civil society coalition that works to promote the right to adequate housing. As a cross-regional coalition, HIC facilitates co-learning processes, predominantly in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and North Africa regions.
Ms Hendler mentioned that HICs political and strategic priorities are driven by members. All political and strategic decisions the coalition takes is decided by members, through voting. This approach lends to the discussion of the day. To the creative involvement of people in the processes that they are involved in.
Ms Hendler suggested that HIC member organisations all work on either one or more of its thematic areas. In so doing, it replaces the dominant, colonial and post-colonial systems with member-driven systems. The first thematic area relates to defending and promoting of housing and land rights. Work is done to advance alternatives around how housing, land, and habitat related issues are being produced and furthered. This is referred to as social production of habitat. Particularly looking at non-market alternatives and taking a critical view towards privatised and commodified approaches to land. HIC facilitates and builds a cross-regional force to identify what are common, systemic challenges that organisations face, regardless of where they are based in the world. It is here that the ways and practices of learning play a key role in advocacy agendas.
HIC’s approaches to learning, its cross-regional learning, is what Ms Hendler referred to as emancipatory learning. Emancipatory pedagogies are at the heart of what HIC does. The first she mentioned was the South African example of Abahlali baseMjondolo. While they are not affiliated with HIC, they have had a long relationship with the Coalition. Abahlali is steeped in a Fanonian school of conscientisation. They make sense of collective approaches to knowledge and to land management. Theirs is a decolonial approach, one they emerges from the context, the culture and the needs of the place that they work in. Another is the Development Action Group, a civil organisation working on housing and land in Cape Town. They have a training programme called The Active Citizens Training Programme, which starts with the understanding that it is particularly the community leaders in informal settlements and backyards that should steer processes. It starts from the premise of leadership in the very personal sphere. Not an imposed, structural power, but a local, contextual one. This then expands into the community sphere, into the political sphere, and into the legal sphere. This constitutes what it means and looks like to be an active citizen.
Another organisation is the well-known Ndifuna Ukwazi, also a member of HIC. They do a lot of advice assemblies with communities facing evictions. It does a lot of re-enactments of potential eviction situations, using theatre as a way to engage with (and to support) community leaders and communities under the threat of forced eviction.
In Cameroon there is an organisation called Book Lovers Association, also a HIC member. Their methodology of learning is called popular tribunals. This is similar and even more developed than that of Ndifuna Ukwazi. They look at the legal frameworks in Cameroon, around forced evictions. And again, they use theatre and training to be able to fulfil a paralegal function, in terms of representing themselves or communities in court.
In Sierra Leone, the Slum Dwellers Federation uses community-led savings groups, data collection, and community led census. Data collection and community-led census collection serves as learning about one another through savings and sharing.
In Kenya there are two organisations. Pamoja Trust and the Mazingira Institute. These organisations are challenging knowledge formation and epistemologies in terms of planning, which is still largely dominated on the continent by outdated academic planning approaches. This is a space for the community and its residents to become architects and planners of their lived realities. There are further examples in Nairobi where communities are co-producing urban infrastructures. The Mazingira Institute is facilitating training and learning processes with youth groups around urban agriculture, in informal settlements as well. These indeed decolonial practices are challenging existing norms.
Finally, in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe People’s Land Rights movement has found that cooperative systems offer an opportune space for exchanging knowledge and learning in practices related to housing.
Emancipatory learning is about valuing these multiple different forms of knowledge, and particularly in producing a bridge between them. Understanding the close relationship between knowing as well as doing. How one informs the other. Cooperation is central to these approaches and practices. In not being top-down. In recognising difference, these offer substance to the conversation on decoloniality.
4 Points of convergence
While addressing the proposed questions from differing orientations, shared perceptions emerged from the speakers. These perceptions are articulated below, around several points of convergence.
4.1 Comprehensive and critical
The speakers agreed that a process of decolonisation is required in the South African education space. This must be an active and ongoing process that is both comprehensive and critical. No stone must be left unturned; students and educators must be centrally involved in the thinking and execution of such a process. Collaboration is of utmost importance, so to ensure its appropriateness and effect.
While African and South African educators have indicated the need for decolonisation, and have put forward policy programmes, the process has been too slow, with too little real implementation.
Any form of decolonisation takes place in a complex and changing world. The speakers agreed that the decolonisation debate has been overly focussed on historical precedents. By remaining in the past, the matter cannot be sufficiently addressed. Decolonisation must be future-centred.
Bottom line: Decolonisation is an important process that South Africans need to undertake, together. There is no template of how to do it. Instead, we must start by asking who we are and where we want to move to as a country.
4.2 Decentring and emancipatory
A future-centred approach to decolonisation serves to decentre the perceived Western dominance. The speakers agreed that decolonisation should not simply be about jettisoning a Western (or universal) approach, rather, such an established knowledge and pedagogy should be regarded as one amongst many. In this regard, there was agreement that too much has been made about breaking down established symbols and systems. The extensive attack on the past and the status quo has produced destruction, not the construction that is required to address the perceived problems.
By decentring Western dominance, an inclusive approach, one that privileges co-learning, mutual understanding, co-existence and transformation is advanced. Such an approach allows learning from everywhere and everyone. It allows for Western and traditional approaches to complement each other and lead to a paradigm shift, and an education system that is emancipatory.
In such an emancipatory system, education is not abstract. Education does not simply shape the student – creating cogs in a machine. Education rather serves to empower the individual to shape themselves, so to shape the world around them. By creating a new, purposeful and meaningful way of learning and understanding, the South African education system will move from beyond superficial changes, to one where students see themselves, authentically reflected in their education. Bringing the lived experiences of students, their cultures and values, into their learning environment will liberate and empower them. Instead of enforcing hierarchical, abstract and foreign concepts, a decolonised education which privileges the lived realities of students and educators will allow for the transformation envisioned in the Constitution. A model that does not only recognise and reflect the South African reality, but one that allows for the perception and navigation of its national goals.
Bottom line: Decolonisation is not simply about rejecting certain ideas and approaches. Instead, it is about considering and then incorporating appropriate knowledge and educational paths that will serve to transform South Africa, so as to ensure personal fulfilment and an inclusive and just nation for all.
4.3 An ubuntu education
An emancipatory education system that critically combines relevant approaches. One that privileges the lived realities of students and educators, realises ubuntu. A human-centred world, which serves both the individual and the community. This is encapsulated in the concept of ubuntu-conscious pedagogy. An approach which allows for both healing and empowering of the individual and the nation.
Instead of focusing on what ‘must fall’, South Africa must build a knowledge economy around the principle of ubuntu. With each individual encouraged to elevate their humanity, while contributing to something bigger than themselves. There is no better way to decolonise. No better way to navigate and transform the world than by recognising one’s inherent and integral part in the global whole.
The goal of an ubuntu education is not about filling individuals with depersonalised knowledge, readying them to become wage slaves. Education is not about career readiness (for an outdated industrial model that is hardly absorbing those exiting the existing education system). Instead, an ubuntu education is one that sees an individual for who they are and where they are from. One that empowers individuals to become self-authenticated. Connected to the environment around them.
More local and relevant subject matter, more hands-on self-creation and self-learning will empower students to write their own stories, mediated through their own cultures and ways. Local impressions and culturally relevant paths must be prioritised, and foreign-mediated lenses and approaches decentred.
Bottom line: The human-centred concept of Ubuntu should guide the decolonisation approach. An education system should be built that serves both the individual and their community. Such a system extends beyond career readiness. It recognises the student as a whole. As coming from and belonging to a community of others. It does not impose upon the student but activates the student to fully embracing and becoming their true self.
5 Significance of the dialogue
The debate around decolonisation is proving to be an important one in the South African context. It is not only an academic debate, but it has greater meaning for the country at large. At its core, it is about how we make sense of who we are and where we are going. While it is clear that more needs to change, so that our identities and cultures are better represented in our schools, it is clear that established scientific knowledge and norms cannot simply be discarded.
Instead, it is important, in the spirit of the scientific pursuit, that we should consider what it is that matters to us as a society and then to move towards that. As it emerged from this dialogue, there is a need to critically incorporate more indigenous knowledge in our education; universal and indigenous knowledges must co-exist. In doing so, we ensure that our education best serves our people. Not simply in the act of producing workers for industry, but capacitating self-reflexive individuals who see themselves as rooted in their community, serving a diverse nation.
By decolonising our education, we are not simply taking away or cancelling certain ideas. Instead, we are incorporating more relevant, authentic approaches and ideas into an expanding educational system. We are bringing in new (and ancient) ideas that allow students to be analytical, self-authenticated individuals who think for themselves. Who see themselves in their educational environment. And who empowered are make the decisions and undertake the journeys that lead a fulfilling and productive life. Decolonisation is about setting free the student, but also about guiding them on their path. It is context and period dependent, and as such there is still a lot that needs to be done to fully understand what it means and what it looks like in the South African context. It is nevertheless a crucial path that we must undertake. To transform our country and to ensure an inclusive and just future for everyone.
6 Conclusion
While several points of convergence detailed what a decolonised education in South Africa will look like, the speakers agreed that too little is being done to make it a reality. There persists an imbalance in the conversation. The focus on breaking down and displacing old approaches and pedagogies does not sufficiently serve the realisation of a South African model. As enumerated across the points of convergence, an expansive, inclusive and constructive conversation is required across all sectors of the education establishment to recentre the South African student and educator. To recognise their environment and their cultures. By looking in, by simplifying, instead of complicating, and by building instead of breaking down, an ubuntu education must be built. Such a fit-for-purpose approach will take time, it is a continuous journey. But when initiated, it will increasingly empower South Africans towards self-authentication. It will shed the disconnected, disembodied knowledge systems that simply prepare individuals for a (largely illusory) world of work.
The dialogue on decolonised education established that by turning inwards, the South African education system should start from the recognition of the individual as a whole, connected to a real and legitimate community of belonging. A community that imbues the individual with legitimacy and value. When starting from such a base, a broader, truly decolonised education system can sprout.
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This report has been published by the Inclusive Society Institute
The Inclusive Society Institute (ISI) is an autonomous and independent institution that functions independently from any other entity. It is founded for the purpose of supporting and further deepening multi-party democracy. The ISI’s work is motivated by its desire to achieve non-racialism, non-sexism, social justice and cohesion, economic development and equality in South Africa, through a value system that embodies the social and national democratic principles associated with a developmental state. It recognises that a well-functioning democracy requires well-functioning political formations that are suitably equipped and capacitated. It further acknowledges that South Africa is inextricably linked to the ever transforming and interdependent global world, which necessitates international and multilateral cooperation. As such, the ISI also seeks to achieve its ideals at a global level through cooperation with like-minded parties and organs of civil society who share its basic values. In South Africa, ISI’s ideological positioning is aligned with that of the current ruling party and others in broader society with similar ideals.
Email: info@inclusivesociety.org.za
Phone: +27 (0) 21 201 1589
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